By E. E. HALE.
I.
It was the morning after the funeral. Aunt Fanny had tried to make the breakfast seem cheerful to the children, or at least tolerable. She had herself gone into the kitchen to send up some trifle a little out of the way for the family meal. She talked to the children of the West, of the ways in which her life in Wisconsin differed from their lives in Boston. And Aunt Fanny succeeded so far that George passed his plate for oatmeal a second time, and little Sibyl did not ask leave to go before her aunt had poured out her second cup of coffee.
Aunt Fanny made the breakfast as long as she could. Then she folded her napkin slowly, and led the children into the other room for morning prayer. They read the last chapter of Proverbs, and then all knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer. Then Aunt Fanny took Nahum’s hand and took little Sibyl on her lap, and she said to all four of the children, “It is very hard for us all, dear children, but I must tell you all about what the plans are. I have a letter from Uncle Cephas, and you know I had a long talk with Mr. Alfred after he came here yesterday. We will not break up here yet.”
“Oh, I am so glad of that,” said poor, sturdy Belle, who generally said so little.
“No, we will not break up here yet. In the spring we will all go to Wisconsin, and you shall learn to like my home at Harris as much as you like Roxbury.” So spoke Aunt Fanny, as cheerfully as she could. And not daring to wait a reply, she hurried on: “See here, Uncle George writes that I may stay till late in March, or early in April, if I think best, but that then we must all be ready to go on.”
You must know that the four children were orphans. Their father had died in April, and now, in the middle of December, their mother had died. Aunt Fanny had been with them for the last month. But she knew, and they knew, that their pleasant home was to be broken up forever.
“And now,” she said, “we must all see what we have to do this winter, to be ready for Wisconsin. Belle and Sibyl, you may come up stairs with me, and we will look through your clothes and the boys’. I must not be lazy this winter, and I will have it for my morning work to put everything in order.”